


Respective Strengths

by Dien



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Angst, Broody Reese, Episode Tag, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-08
Updated: 2013-11-08
Packaged: 2017-12-31 20:31:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1036068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dien/pseuds/Dien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode tag to Baby Blue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Respective Strengths

Finch considered himself a bit of an audiophile. As if to make up for a myopia severe enough to saddle him with glasses from early childhood on, nature had given him keen hearing and a mind keyed for, among other things, sound. The difference between 180-gram vinyl and 120; the almost subliminal drone of an air conditioner in the background of a conversation... he noticed such things.  
  
Right now he could hear Reese's footsteps, which in itself was unusual, because Reese usually moved with a cat's tread; and furthermore he could hear despair in Reese's heavy steps.  
  
Finch did not believe in assigning emotional qualities to the sound of footsteps, and so told himself firmly that he was projecting and personifying unnecessarily. He kept his eyes fixed on the screen, on setting up bank accounts for Leila, funding her future with her grandparents.  
  
Reese entered. The footsteps stopped, and he could hear Reese's breathing, very faint, and then Reese moved for a chair and sank down on it.  
  
There wasn't anything to say. Any platitude that could make it better. Finch felt nearly as bruised, emotionally and physically, as Reese did at the moment. He kept typing.  
  
After several minutes Reese said, “Carter's... withdrawing her assistance.”  
  
“I was listening,” Finch answered just as quietly as Reese had spoken. He tapped buttons, brought up some security footage, admissions papers to a hospital.  
  
“Detective Szymanski just got out of surgery. No prognosis from the doctors yet that I've been able to tell. I'll... keep you updated.”  
  
He heard Reese exhale. By the noise the chair made he was shifting in it, maybe leaning back to stare at the ceiling.  
  
“Go ahead and say it, Finch.”  
  
“Say what?”  
  
“The _I told you so_ you're sitting on. You were right. Shouldn't have gone to Elias. Shouldn't have--”  
  
“Mr. Reese,” Finch said shortly, and had the satisfaction at least temporarily shutting Reese up. He pushed back from the desk, swiveled his chair around to face the other man.  
  
In the light from the monitors Reese looked bad, bad the way he'd looked when Finch had first found him. There'd been rough days since then-- the day they'd saved Elias-- but Reese's body language at such points had always been taut with simmering anger, fists clenched, frustration almost tangible. Now he was slack, his still-bloody hands limp in his lap. His face, turned towards the ceiling, was vacant and stricken at the same time.  
  
Finch pursed his lips. The impulse was to comfort, to murmur reassurances, but he decided against it. In the first place it wasn't something he was terribly good at, being comforting, and in the second he didn't think it was what John needed, exactly. Not really.  
  
“You're obviously perfectly capable of booking a guilt trip on your own, Mr. Reese; you'll have to excuse me if I refuse to play along,” he said flatly, and swiveled back to face his desk. It wasn't exactly a slap in the face, but it would do.  
  
He felt rather than saw Reese staring at the back of his head. Finch opened one of the desk's drawers and dug out the first aid kit before turning to face Reese again.  
  
“Now. Hands out, let's see to your wrists.”  
  
Reese continued staring at him for a long second before slowly starting to pull up his cuffs. “Says the guy who had blunt trauma to the head a few hours ago.”  
  
“Yes, and you're going to be driving me to a private clinic so that I can have them rule out possible concussion,” Finch answered. He took the possibility of trauma to his brain very seriously. “Once we get your wrists cleaned up.”  
  
Reese might have smiled; in the dim light it was hard to tell. He held out his wrists though. Finch flicked on one of the desk lamps in order to be able to work, and for a minute or two said nothing, focused on cleaning the ugly abrasions on Reese's wrists.  
  
“Are you injured anywhere else?” he asked quietly as the hydrogen peroxide fizzed and Reese grimaced at the sting.  
  
“Just bruises.”  
  
“Mmf.” Finch gave him a look over the tops of his glasses, then held up one of Reese's hands to study his knuckles. He dabbed more antiseptic onto the scrapes there while Reese glared at him.  
  
Gauze next; he wrapped it around Reese's wrists firmly. “There. Your jacket sleeves should cover it, and if it doesn't, they're very discreet at the clinic. Let me just finish up here...”  
  
The kit was stowed back in the desk. Finch rubbed gingerly at his own head-- his headache was fierce, throbbing, but there had honestly not been _time_ to deal with it. The night had been one crisis to the next, little breathing space between them. At least Leila was safe now.  
  
Finch clicked and typed, arranged for a delivery of paperwork to the Cruz family, arranged to be informed of Szymanski's condition, set a background check to running for the next Number, which had come in seventeen minutes ago. He closed windows until the face of Gianni Moretti was staring at him from his work earlier in the day.  
  
Moretti was dead, or as good as it, in Elias's gentle hands. Finch studied the old mobster's face for a moment before closing that window too.  
  
Moretti wasn't the first one they had failed, since he'd found Reese, but it had been a while since the last time. It tasted sour, not least because their own involvement had been how Elias had found him, but Finch just methodically added it to his mental Board. It had been bound to happen eventually; it would happen again. Morbidly he considered a workplace sign: _39 Days since Last Death!_  
  
Behind him Reese was very quiet. Brooding, really.  
  
Finch put the extraneous computers into standby, then got gingerly to his feet. He held the edge of the desk, wary against dizziness, but his balance held.  
  
Finch turned the desk light off, plunging the room, and John Reese, back into shadow.  
  
“...Leila's alive, John,” Finch said tiredly. “Alive and safe. We can second-guess having gone to Elias until we're sick of it, but the result right _now_ is that Leila's okay, and you wouldn't have found her if you hadn't gone to Elias. Is that what you need to hear?”  
  
Reese's eyes darted up to his face, and then away. The other man stood, nothing ginger in his motions despite however many bruises were hiding under the suit jacket.  
  
“And Moretti's dead,” he answered. “And Szymanski-- a good man, a good cop-- might die.”  
  
Finch exhaled. This was why he'd not wanted to go the comforting route to begin with. He pushed off from his desk and collected his coat.  
  
“Yes. Alright. We failed. Mr. Reese, what do you want me to say?”  
  
“No,” Reese answered with a vehemence that made Finch pause, twist his torso around to study Reese over his shoulder. The other man was a dark silhouette by the desk save for the glow of his white shirt, his face completely in shadow.  
  
“We didn't fail, _I_ failed. I failed Carter, I almost failed Leila--”  
  
Reese's already-low voice dropped lower, to a hoarse whisper. “Failure isn't an option.”  
  
“Oh now that is ridiculous,” Finch snapped in exasperation, and Reese started, giving him another look as though he'd just been slapped. Finch rolled his eyes as he struggled into his coat.  
  
“'Failure isn't an option'? Did they drill that into you in the Rangers, Reese, or just the CIA? I realize it may be offensive to your ego, but failure happens to be _inevitable_. We. Are. Human. _Yes,_ Mr. Reese, sometimes we are going to screw up. We are not going to save everybody. We have already lost people in the course of this job, and we _will_ lose others. It's inevitable. Eventually the Machine will give us a number and we won't have enough advance warning, or we will have another number and won't be able to work them both, or we just plain won't figure it out in time. Do you intend to do this to yourself every time it happens?”  
  
Reese stood there blinking, taken aback by the fierceness in Finch's tone. “...Finch...”  
  
“I'm not done, Mr. Reese. I've had all night to go over my own _failure_ in the car, when one man came up and smashed through the window and dragged me out onto the sidewalk and cracked me over the head and took Leila from me.  
  
“It was only one man. If I was-- somebody else-- well if I were _you_ \-- I'm sure I would have been able to do something clever and horrible like break his arm or drop him with a punch to the throat, but as it stands I _failed Leila too_ and it is incredibly irritating to watch you wrestle with the fact that, yes, you do in fact have limitations when I am reminded of _mine_ with every step that I take. And every time I look at the list of those who died before I found you.”  
  
He found himself breathing hard in the wake of his little rant. For several seconds neither of them said anything. Finch took a shuddering breath to compose himself, shook his head slightly.  
  
“...we're both tired, John. Let's just... get to the clinic and... save our mutual self-castigation for another day. Alright?”  
  
Reese crossed from the desk to stand in front of him. For a moment Finch was worried he'd gone too far, let his own emotional response color things too much and that Reese was going to be angry, upset...  
  
“I kinda wish you'd just given me the _I told you so,_ ” Reese said dryly, but there was a hint of a smile playing at the corner of his lips and Finch relaxed a bit.  
  
“Just trying to provide a bit of perspective, Mr. Reese,” Finch murmured.  
  
They started for the stairs. Finch held his breath a half-second at every step. He was conscious of Reese throwing him glances every so often, and he steeled himself to respond rationally if Reese asked if he was okay, since under the circumstances it was a completely reasonable question.  
  
“Finch--”  
  
Finch didn't break stride. Step, step, why did the Library have so many damned stairs?  
  
“Yes, Mr. Reese?”  
  
“You're not weak. Just so you know.”  
  
His bad leg betrayed him, foot dragging along the marble, and Finch reached to the handrail to steady himself.  
  
“We each have our strengths, Mr. Reese. I'm well-accustomed to the fact that I'm more useful operating from behind a screen, and that I ought to leave the physical heroics to you,” Finch said softly, and began moving again.  
  
Reese grunted, and they didn't speak again until they were at the car. Finch eased himself into the passenger seat, leaned his head back against the seat's leather upholstery, and listened to the sounds: the driver-side door opening, the _ding ding ding_ until it shut again, the jangle of his keys, the muffled purr of the engine as Reese turned the ignition.  
  
“You know, Harold, respective strengths or not...” Reese said, and Finch could hear it: the humor in his tone, the smile that he could see in his mind's eye. A battered smile but still a smile, Reese's lips curling as the other man permitted himself humanity again.  
  
“...you're a lot better with a diaper than I am.”  
  
Finch smiled in answer, not opening his eyes. “Just drive, Mr. Reese.”


End file.
